


5 places Steve didn’t find Victor Hesse and one place he did

by Amarylissa



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amarylissa/pseuds/Amarylissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes being a SEAL is frustrating ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scotland

**Author's Note:**

> This is written after reading a post about frustrations at reading things written by people who had done no research, and relied on TV shows for their background. If Steve had chased Hesse for years, he must have travelled the globe in pursuit. I’ve had no chance to go to Hawaii, but here are several places that I’ve done ‘on the ground’ research, where Steve may have been. Of course, I don’t have real experience of being a SEAL …

It was obvious that he’d end up here at some point. Glasgow was big, anonymous, and part of Hesse’s roots. Steve slouched through Glasgow Central, finding it easy to keep a low profile amongst the tourists and commuters. His body appeared relaxed, someone following a familiar, even tedious, route, but anyone who looked at his eyes would see he was alert. Steve scanned the crowds, looking for those high cheekbones, the tight curly brown hair. The tip off had come in that Hesse had business to sort out in Glasgow and was due in soon, but the day wore on. Steve soon exhausted the options of the station. He had two coffees, then slowly sipped a pint of beer, before getting the text. One of Hesse’s aliases had been picked up going out of Glasgow Airport. It made sense, really, and Steve cursed under his breath at making the wrong choice. Next time, maybe.


	2. Bangladesh

It was dark. Steamy heat hit Steve as he leapt from the aircraft and made his way rapidly to the waiting jeep. Clear passage had been arranged in advance: time was of the essence as Hesse had been spotted in Dhaka that morning. What he was doing there was anyone’s guess: he had no known associates, so all Steve had to go on was the sighting in a hotel near Hazrat Shahjalal International. It took him less than half an hour to make his way to the hotel. He drove in his usual fashion, swiftly but taking care to avoid the locals sitting and sleeping out on the kerbside. He headed straight into the hotel foyer and up to the reception desk. Within a few minutes he had the information he needed, but not that which he wanted. Hesse had been there, but had checked out earlier. Turning away from the desk, Steve grabbed his mobile from his pocket. His shoulders slumped slightly as he left the hotel and reported in.


	3. Canada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More frustration for Steve...

It had been 12 months since he started the mission. 12 frustrating, tiring months of non-stop travel. Sometimes Hesse escaped by a hairsbreadth, other times the tips were old, and he was long gone, or had never been there. This time, though, Steve was hopeful. He paddled quietly towards Percé. Air recon had Hesse holed up in an old farmhouse, just off the beach. It was used for the odd summer camp, but no-one had been in there for months. Steve had been dropped, with a kayak, far enough out that Hesse should have no warning. It was a risk going in alone, but heat surveillance indicated that there was only one person in the farmhouse. Steve tried to focus on the waves breaking on the sandy shore, rather than letting his mind leap ahead to possible success. Hesse could run, but on the Gaspé Peninsula there was nowhere to run to, and Steve was confident he could outpace Hesse over this wild territory. His rapid paddling slowed as he reached the shore. Unnoticed he dragged the boat up the beach until he could shove it into some scrubby bushes. Bending low he ran inland. From the maps he’d studied he would be approaching the farm house from the south. He’d landed, he hoped, far enough south that no one would have seen him. He set a brisk pace, knowing that dawn would soon take away the cover he was relying on.   
Inside the house, all was quiet. Steve stood, silently. He’d found a window that he could open, and had managed to do so without making a noise. His weapon held in front, he crept from room to room. His hope was to find Hesse still asleep. Having cleared the lower rooms he climbed the wooden stairs, feet to the far edges to avoid creaks. One tread thwarted his efforts and he paused, to see if anyone was disturbed by the noise. A thud from upstairs, and Steve knew he’d been detected. He sprinted to the top of the stairs and turned the first corner, gun to the fore. Clearing the landing in the greying light he entered the room nearest to where he’d heard the sound. He could see an open window and headed straight towards it. A shot flew past his head and he dived for the floor. More cautiously he raised his head and looked out of the window, only to see a figure racing over the low ridge that separated the farmland from the shore. Steve stood, vaulted on to the window sill and leapt, stumbling slightly as he reached the roof of the shed below, then jumped down again and set up a fast pursuit. As dawn broke, he could see Hesse’s figure. From the vantage point of the ridge he let off shots, one, two, three, as Hesse clambered into a motor boat. Running again Steve continued to fire as Hesse took off through the surf, out into the sea. The boat didn’t stop as Steve left the beach and ran into the water. He stood there, impotent, as Hesse got further and further away. One small consolation, though, was that Hesse obviously slept naked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of my mini nano wrimo efforts


	4. Nepal

This time Steve was leading a team as they hiked through the mountainous region of Nepal. He felt a little like he was back in his natural habitat. It was monsoon season, the locals carrying umbrellas and wearing flip flops as they went nimbly up the dirt tracks, carrying large sacks of food. SEAL team six were more heavily dressed, laden with backpacks. Steve wondered, as he often did, just what drove Victor and Anton Hesse round the world. Some places it make sense: find a war zone and you could find just the right customers for the mayhem the Hesse brothers offered. But up here in the mountains, the mix of tourist trekkers, monks, and local villagers made no sense. The Comprehensive Peace Accord had ended the civil war. However passport control had flagged both Victor and Anton Hesse entering the country, under known aliases. Local military intelligence had placed them in a small village in the mountains. The Nepalese Government was keen to keep the warmongering brothers from stirring up discord, and because of the international interest in the pair, SEAL team six were on their way to capture them. The Hesse brothers were more often apart that together: it wasn’t clear whether this was simply so they could run their ‘enterprise’ more effectively, or to present multiple targets to their pursuers, but Steve was keen to seize the opportunity for a double capture.   
Mud spattered Steve’s boots as he followed his team up the mountain. He’d taken point earlier in the day but now was bringing up the rear of the team so he could better see how the men were coping with the hike. Thick undergrowth, deep mud and uneven terrain could scupper their attack before they even had the chance to reach the right village, so Steve called for a break once they reached an area with slightly more solid soil and enough space to halt. The team knew the plan, but he took the chance to reiterate what would happen next, before they headed further up the mountain.   
By nightfall the team was nearing the final destination, and split into the three planned groups. Steve had reviewed errors from past attempts time and time again when formulating his plans. This time, there was no room for mistakes. Group A was ready for a front entry into the village while Group B went left and Group C, Steve’s team, went right. Each SEAL was a few paces away from the other, aiming to silently sweep and search until the Hesses were found. Steve gave the go, then gritted his teeth as he moved forward. The key was not to alert the villagers, but it seemed like someone had done this already. As they peered into each house, no-one was there. If he had been a cat, Steve’s hackles would have risen. This stank of a set up. “Fall-back” he hissed urgently into the the mic of his comms unit, but as he said the words the night sky lit up and a boom resonated into the silence of the forest.   
No-one died. That was the best that could be said of the clusterfuck of an operation. Somewhere, someone had messed with the intel. There would be an investigation – had Hesse been tipped off, or was the initial intel a set up too? As Steve recovered in hospital in Germany he spent the time plotting his next move.


	5. Ireland

Intelligence had made a breakthrough. It seemed like the Hesse brothers' movements across the globe had a pattern. Several years of monitoring their every move, finding out where they had been, even if only after the event, had shown that after avoiding the family home altogether for many years, every Fall the men ended up back on their home territory of Galway, together. This is why, for the last three months, Steve had been living undercover in the town.   
It hadn’t been easy to work out a fool proof cover. Tall Americans with a military bearing tend to stand out wherever they are. Galway has its fair share of tourists, but given that it was unclear how long Steve would need to wait, how long until Victor and Anton Hesse would visit the family home, that cover wouldn’t work. Galway is famous for its music, with a festival every summer, but although Steve was ready to do whatever was needed to create a cover, his lack of musical ability ruled that out. So, it had been decided that Steve would be a visiting academic. He had been growing his hair, and a beard, and had adopted a slouching walk. He rented a room, and turned up at the start of the academic year with boxes of well-thumbed books, an old pc, and a suitcase of scruffy jumpers and corduroy trousers. A pack of tobacco and cigarette papers accompanied him when he visited the city’s many pubs. Anything less like the upright clean shaven Lieutenant McGarrett would be hard to find, yet still Steve was sometimes uneasy. If the boot had been on the other foot, he felt that he would be able to spot Hesse, disguised or not. So, he kept to the shadows, kept to himself, and did his best to watch without being seen.   
Steve’s passport proclaimed him to be a Canadian academic, studying the controversial journalist and author Frank Harris. Steve had read Harris’s journalistic endeavours, his novels, his memoirs, his studies on Shakespeare, his biographies and his play. Steve was on one level heartily sick of frank Harris, yet had developed a grudging respect for the man who had worked his way up from penniless immigrant to lawyer, author and editor. As part of his cover he had on his computer an erudite discourse on Frank Harris which he knew almost word perfectly. Should anyone ask him about any aspect of Harris’s life, he could answer. He appeared to spend his days lurking in the library at NUIG, pretending to research, but in fact often skipped out of the library though a different door to that which he used to enter, leaving his piles of papers as a cover. The librarians were used to students coming and going: one researcher more or less made no difference.   
Steve received intel on the whereabouts of the Hesse brothers on a daily basis. He grew frustrated as he heard that Anton was in Egypt, Victor in Mumbai, both had possibly been spotted on a cruise ship. He didn’t dare build relationships with anyone outside the university, and he only made passing acquaintance with departmental colleagues. He would have relished the chance to join some of the sporting clubs, but had to avoid anything where his physical strength and agility might give him away. Instead he subjected himself to rigorous workouts with the curtains drawn in his small flat, and took long hikes at the weekend. All the time, he was waiting for the command to go in to action. He grew to like his evening pint of Guinness, only one, never more, sipped slowly in a different pub each evening as he listened to the locals chatter at the bar. His ear became attuned to the accent.  
Steve had been carefully studying the Hesse parents, assessing their home and how he could successfully complete his mission. They lived in a neat, modern terrace on the outskirts of the town. He avoided passing by the front door: it was a quiet street and would be all too obvious if he took to standing around on street corners, or even sitting in a parked car. He wondered whether they knew what their sons did.   
The houses backed on to a quarry and fields – much more promising ground for Steve to stake out. Some days he’d catch a bus out of town, with ruck-sac, rain jacket and hiking boots, and appear to set off into the countryside or around the Lough. It was easy enough, though, to double back on himself and head back towards the town. He’d dig himself in on top of a pile of gravel and stay there for hours, binoculars trained on the house. Other days he might disappear up a tree, and watch from a different direction. What did he see? Mr and Mrs Hesse seemed like any other retired couple. They went shopping and watched television. He watched as she hung the washing out in the small back garden, identifying clothes belonging to an older man and an older woman. When they were out one evening he broke into the house and placed small bugs which could be monitored by intelligence. The one thing he dreaded was that, after all these months of preparation, he’d miss the brothers’ return home.   
After one such trip out, Steve returned home wet and cold. Out of all the places he had been in the world, he rated the Irish weather pretty poorly. The permeating damp made lurking unpleasant, and all he wanted was a good hot shower. What he’d get, though, would be a warmish bath, his budget flat missing the small luxury of a shower. He dropped his backpack at the doorway and entered, stooping to untie his laces. He peeled off his clammy coat, and hung it out to dry. As always, the first thing he did on returning to the flat was to check his computer. He logged on, then went through a series of passwords, and looked at his updated briefing. Finally, the news he was looking for. Victor Hesse had been seen passing through Heathrow under an alias. Extensive work by the intelligence department meant that they picked up his trail before he had disappeared again. The red flag had gone up as he had transferred to a flight to Dublin. Steve cursed briefly: he’d been out for 6 hours, had he missed Hesse’s arrival the moment he returned home? A quick calculation put Hesse probably still disembarking from the airport. Steve reacted rapidly. He sent a message back asking for Anton’s whereabouts: if he was on a flight heading towards the UK or Ireland this might be the meeting they were waiting for.   
He changed from his scruffy academic clothes into his preferred option of black t-shirt and cargoes. He layered up with protective black outerwear, and loaded his pockets. From under the floorboards he brought out a locked box of weapons, pocketing a couple of knives, strapping on two smaller guns, and carefully putting a rifle into a backpack.   
There was no response on the computer, so he sent additional information that he was heading out into the field, closed down the laptop firmly, grabbed his comms unit from where he had stashed it, and headed out into the street.   
Steve knew he needed to make good time to catch Hesse entering his parent’s home. He could walk it in 10 minutes, but he was concerned that even a few minutes could be vital. If no-one had an update on Anton’s whereabouts, could he have come in by boat? Black gloves in place, he quickly picked a lock on a bicycle left by its unwary owner down a side street and set off as fast as he could, taking the back streets rather than the main road. While he cycled, his mind raced too. Could they have sneaked in to their parents’ home while he was watching, after he’d left? A solo mission was risky, as it left many possible times, places and contacts unwatched, but it had been decided to keep everything as low profile as possible after the last mission had gone pear-shaped due to a leak.   
Slinging the bicycle into some bushes, Steve leapt off the road into the scrubland beside the row of houses where his targets might be arriving any moment. Moving as fast as he could while crouched low, he silently made his way along outside the neat row of garden fences. He had plugged his earphone and mic in before leaving, and now switched them on, whispering “I’m in place,” as he reached his chosen tree. Under cover of darkness he reckoned he could perch here for the next 12 hours. He needed to get confirmation from the monitoring of the bugs that Hesse wasn’t already inside: ideally confirmation if Anton was arriving too. Was it better to capture one of the brothers and risk allowing the second one to get away, or take the higher risk of capturing both at once? Steve forced himself to focus on the job in hand. Radio comms needed to be kept to a minimum, but he needed to know, “What’s the latest on location of target 2?”  
The news from the control room wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Anton Hesse’s whereabouts was still unknown. “Hold off and await further instructions” left Steve frustrated. He was in position to take down someone he had been chasing for the last year or more.  
He sat up in the tree, close to the trunk where he had the optimum view into the Hesse family living room. The night was quiet – he was confident he could hear a car driving up this quiet back street if either of the Hesse brothers arrived. He knew he could maintain his position for hours, unmoving, if needed, and was shocked by a cold sharp stabbing pain in his neck. Then nothing.   
xx  
The next thing Steve knew was the feeling of cold concrete against his cheek, a throbbing headache, an aching body and a dry mouth. His wrists were cuffed together, and chained to something cold, hard, unmoving – perhaps a pipe. He kept as still as he could, while he assessed his situation. Had he stirred as he roused? Did his captors know he was now conscious? He listened to see if he had company.   
After a moment or two he relaxed a fraction. He was sure the room was empty, now he moved to see if he could learn more about where he was. He struggled to a sitting position, but his movement was limited by the pipe he was chained to. His feet were bound. He could feel a cold stone wall against his back. His shoulder and hip hurt: he must have fallen from the tree. As his vision cleared slightly he could vaguely see the outline of the walls, high windows, but couldn’t see far enough into the darkness at the other end of the room to detect a door. He could tell him pockets had been emptied, his guns were missing. Tensing his ankle, he decided his captors had been thorough and taken the knife strapped there too.   
He stilled as he heard movement some way off. Definitely footsteps, coming down the hallway. He gave one hard tug on the pipe holding him pinned against the wall, but to no avail. He would have rather met his captors standing, untethered.  
A door swung open at the far end of the room, letting a small amount of light in. Steve struggled to see the face of his captors, who were silhouetted in the dim light, but it didn’t matter. He would know the Hesse brothers anywhere, simply by their outline, their walk, their posture. He cursed inwardly.   
“You been hassling my parents?” was Victor’s opening shot.   
Steve stayed silent.   
“You’ve spoiled our weekend” was Anton’s contribution, “We had a nice little family party planned. No outsiders invited.”  
Steve’s mind raced. This was not what he had planned. Both Hesse brothers where he wanted them, but with nothing that he could do about it. The only redeeming feature was that h was alone on this mission: last time more than half his team had ended up in hospital. He tensed, waiting for some sort of attack from the brothers, but instead they turned away.   
“Don’t bother yelling”, Victor called back over his shoulder, “No-one will hear you. We’ve taken your gear. We’ll deal with you when the party’s over.”  
Xx  
The night passed slowly. Steve struggled with his bindings. He knew he needed to get out of there, but with his hands chained behind him it was hard. He contorted himself to feel in his pockets, but the Hesses had been thorough. They had, however, left him his boots. He was momentarily pleased by this thought. More painful twisting – the chain was just about long enough – and he could untie his laces. Scraping his skin painfully against the cuffs he managed to get his left book off, then feel inside to pull up the lining. A long time ago, when the boots were new, he had added a couple of extras, and he was hoping that the thin piece of metal was still inside. He cursed himself for a moment for failing to check before he went out, but then ceased to curse and allowed himself a tiny celebration when he found it still there. Celebrations were rapidly postponed though, as Steve applied himself to the difficult task of picking the lock on the cuffs with his hands tied tightly behind his back. He had no idea how long the Hesses’ ‘party’ would last, and he intended to be ready to surprise them if and when they returned.   
It took a while, but at last he freed himself from the cuffs. The chain was attached to the cuffs, and with his hands free he made swift work of freeing his feet. He’d been considering where he could be, and guessed that he was close to where he had been captured. Stiff, and still slightly woozy from the tranquiliser dart Steve staggered as he stood. He had to check his location, find his weapons, check in… his mind raced as he reframed his plan.   
Suddenly he was half blinded by lights from outside the building. He pushed back against the wall, seeking cover, as he heard crashing doors. Seconds later a team of SEALS burst in to the room he had been held in. Recognising allies, he held his hands in the air, until they could recognise him too.   
“Man you look rough!” was the exclamation that greeted him.  
“Come on, we’re out of here.”  
Steve followed at a run, a SEAL on either side. They emerged into the area surrounding the derelict quarry that Steve had explored only days before.   
Steve was ushered into a helicopter, which took off rapidly into the night sky.   
“What about the Hesses?” was the first thing he said.  
“Gone,” came the succinct reply.


End file.
